Timeline
14 September 1937
The Nyon Arrangement was a short multilateral agreement signed on at Nyon, Switzerland, by nine states: the United Kingdom, France, the Soviet Union, Bulgar…
17 September 1937
A supplementary agreement signed at Geneva on extended the same regime to surface vessels and aircraft.
Positions at a glance
Supporters
The Nyon Arrangement was a short multilateral agreement signed on 14 September 1937 at Nyon, Switzerland, by nine states: the United Kingdom, France, the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Egypt, Greece, Romania, Turkey, and Yugoslavia. It responded to a wave of submarine attacks on neutral merchant shipping in the Mediterranean during the Spanish Civil War — attacks widely attributed to Italian submarines operating in support of Franco's Nationalists, though Italy was not named in the text, which referred only to "piratical acts by submarines."
Opponents
Submarine attacks against neutral shipping in the Mediterranean essentially ceased after the patrols began. Anthony Eden, then British Foreign Secretary, considered it one of the clearer diplomatic successes of his tenure. Historians often cite Nyon as a rare instance in the late 1930s where Britain and France acted decisively against Axis-aligned aggression, in contrast to the broader pattern of appeasement that would culminate in Munich a year later. The arrangement is also frequently referenced in discussions of how the international law of piracy can be adapted to state-sponsored maritime violence.
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In September 1937, after Italian submarines repeatedly torpedoed neutral merchant ships, nine states meeting at Nyon agreed to let British and French warships sink any submarine attacking non-Spanish vessels in the Mediterranean.
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